Forum FAQ

Comments

26. What if an image doesn’t violate the rules, but I just don’t like it?

Sometimes people will post images that you just don’t like, but don’t actually violate the forum rules. If you are using an ad blocker with your browser, you can right click the image and choose to block the image.

If the images are in signatures, you can do the above or use the forum features to remove all images from signatures or block signatures altogether. Go to Preferences > Signature Settings and choose to ‘Strip images out of signatures’ or ‘Hide signatures always’.

Alternatively, if the member consistently posts images to which you object, but are not rule violations, you can choose to ignore the member.

Warnings are notices from the forum moderators and administors that you have violated the rules in some way as well as requests to stop the behavior. Warnings are private and are not seen by other posters, and will not be discussed with them.

If you have questions about warnings, please consult the forum rules or EA Terms of Service. If you still have questions, then contact the moderator who issued the warning. Others will not be able to help you or act on your behalf.

Yes, they do. But, due to the volume of posts, they cannot read or respond to them all.

On very rare occasions, you may see them respond to a specific post. You can recognize developers by the green stripe at the top of their posts and their screen names, which will start with SimGuru, such as @SimGuruDrake. If you go to a Guru’s profile page, one of their roles will be listed as Sim_Guru (likewise moderators will have Sim_Guru or MOD_ENG listed as one of their roles).

Occasionally, they hold special Ask-a-Guru sessions where players are invited to ask game-related questions. These sessions are irregular and will usually be preceded by an announcement of the date and time they will occur. You can find some of the answers to past sessions here.

If you have a good idea for the game, posting in the Ideas Corner is probably the best way to have it seen by a Guru. You will also get feedback here and possibly support from other players if they like your idea.

Some Gurus can also be reached via Twitter if your idea can be reduced to a 140 character soundbite. You can also get information and sometimes receive responses to posts on Facebook.

You can change the style of your text by using the buttons at the top of the box for entering your message. You can hover your cursor over the button to see what it does (e.g. italicize). Highlight the text in the message you want to alter and select a formatting button to insert the appropriate tags. Formatting changes will be applied when you press ‘Preview’ or ‘Post Message’.

Alternatively, you can use Bulletin Board Code (BBC) tags to make the changes, including some not selectable from the message box buttons.

The forums autosave drafts of replies as you are typing. You will see them saved in the message box at the bottom of the page where you type new replies. After the message is saved it will remain there even if you leave a thread or the site and come back later. (Note: Only drafts of replies to existing threads are saved. Drafts of ‘New Discussions’ are not saved, even if you click ‘Save Draft’.)

You cannot delete drafts from the thread view. Instead, you can erase all the text, type in a “.”, and save the period as a draft by hitting ‘Save Draft’. This will prevent you from accidentally posting something you didn’t intend to.

You can delete drafts from the master draft list found at http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/drafts . To do this, hover your cursor over the draft you wish to delete until an ‘X’ appears in the upper right corner. Click the ‘X’ to delete the draft.

Spoiler tags are currently not enabled on these forums. If you enclose information in the spoiler tags, it will simply appear as a gray box that cannot be clicked on to reveal the information.

This:

Spoiler Text

Appears as this:

Spoiler Text

Quoting the post does allow members to view the information contained within, but many will not do that.

There really aren’t spoilers in this game since it’s not linear and doesn’t follow any particular storyline, but if you want to indicate that something is a spoiler, you can simply indicate in the thread title that spoilers may be contained or type something like **Spoiler Alert**, leave a few blank lines, and then type your post.

If you post a thread in the wrong subforum (such as General Discussion when you meant to post in Off-Topic Chat), you can move your post by simply editing the original post and reselecting the appropriate forum.

Sometimes you may wish to link directly to a post in a thread rather than to the whole thread. To do this, click the date/time at the top of the post. A direct link to that post will now appear in your browser’s address bar. You can copy and paste this link wherever you like and it will take you directly to the post rather than the beginning of the thread or to the most recent post in the thread.

You can’t. Information posted to walls is viewable by everyone both on your wall and in the Activity Feed. If you want to post something that other users can’t see, then use the private messaging (PM) system.

A signature is a line, couple of lines, or image that will appear at the bottom of each one of your posts. You can create a customized signature by selecting the cogwheel next to the search box at the top of the page and clicking ‘Preferences’. Choose ‘Signature Settings’ from the column on the left. Type the message you wish to appear as your signature. You can also add a single image.

This forum censors certain words that are deemed inappropriate for the forum of a teen-rated (T-rated) game, and these words are changed to ‘plum’.

There are occasionally some errors as in the past the forum has censored such words as pizza, title, and public. Cursing and rude slang and names are not allowed. However, if you feel the censor is blocking a word in error, PM a moderator about it.

Sometimes threads may be moved to another more appropriate section of the forum at a moderator’s discretion. You can still find your threads by clicking on ‘Discussions’ in the left column of your page.

If your thread does not appear listed under ‘Discussions’, then it has been hidden or deleted most likely because an argument broke out or it violated the forum rules.

There was a glitch in the system, which didn’t allow some users to post images. It should be fixed now, but you will have to follow these steps to get things working again if you were experiencing problems:

1) Go into Signatures
2) Delete all text in the Signature and click save
3) Leave the page
4) Go back into profile settings
5) Go into Signatures
6) Update it with the image / text you'd like to use and click save

Stickies are notices and threads affixed to the top of a subforum. They generally contain announcements and important information for forum members to view. If you’ve read an announcement or feel that the sticky thread is not pertinent to you, you can dismiss the thread by hovering your cursor over the thread title until a cogwheel appears. Click the cogwheel and choose ’Dismiss’. The stickied thread will now behave as a normal thread and sink in the list instead of staying at the top.